General Due Home On Sunday U.s. Troops Reduced By Half In Gulf Area

April 18, 1991|Los Angeles Times

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Closing the books on Operation Desert Storm, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and most of the U.S. Central Command will leave Saudi Arabia on Saturday as the number of American troops in the Persian Gulf dropped on Wednesday to half its wartime strength.

Exactly three months after Schwarzkopf launched what became a devastating rout of the Iraqi army, U.S. military officials announced that Schwarzkopf and most of his staff will return to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, the Central Command`s permanent headquarters.

Schwarzkopf, whose direction of the war made him a hero in the eyes of many Americans and brought him offers ranging from lucrative book deals to a potential political career, has said that he plans to retire from the Army.

``I`m looking for another cause,`` he recently told reporters when asked about his future. He said he planned to go fishing, play with his dog and ``enjoy being a father`` to his three children again.

A staff of six officers in Riyadh is answering Schwarzkopf`s fan letters and handling the hundreds of offers he receives regularly. The affable but blunt general is credited with orchestrating the 100-hour ground war that tricked, surrounded and finally crushed the Iraqi forces.

Schwarzkopf, 56, will continue to command U.S. forces in the Gulf from Tampa, where he is expected to arrive on Sunday morning.

About 20,000 troops from the 3rd Armored Division will stay behind to protect and feed thousands of Iraqi refugees until a U.N. peacekeeping force is in place. Most of the troops will remain in a narrow buffer zone along the Iraq-Kuwait border, but some are being deployed around a second refugee camp just inside Iraq near the Saudi town of Rafha.